engleski

SOCIAL MEDIA AS A PROSPEROUS LANGUAGE LEARNING PLATFORM

The digital age has incited a revolution in contemporary education creating the necessity for teaching and learning notably different from previous generations, adjusted to the needs of technologically advanced students often referred to as ‘digital natives’. Regarding the EFL practices the impact of the ‘always on’ culture on both quantity and quality of exposure to English is indisputable and time spent online is rapidly growing. Moreover, one of the prevalent online activities for the youth nowadays is social media use which is one of the biggest certainties to the future of language teaching and learning. Exactly the constant use of social media and by that also the use of English is not to be seen as a setback but as an opportunity and challenge for both students and language teachers in higher education environment. To this end, the teachers should use digital skills of their students to their advantage and apply social media language learning (SMLL) methods since they “facilitate discussion, participation, and the sharing of various forms of content and have become a pivotal resource for students” (Faizi, El Afia, & Chiheb, 2013). Due to the still limited research on the use of social media for English language acquisition in Croatia, a survey for the purpose of this paper was distributed online to the students at the Faculty of Economics in Osijek as well as high school students from Osijek. It focused on researching students’ experience and perception of the use of social media for the purpose of English language learning (ELL) providing practical implications for English educators interested in engaging with students in the digital playground via social media tools. Finally, linguistic and communicative aspects of social media tools offer a plethora of opportunities for enhancing English language acquisition and manifest their exclusive potential exactly for the language learning environment.

‘always on’ culture, English, higher education, SMLL, social media

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